


On the Way Home (Mythology Remix)

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Near Death, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-07-28 11:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20063173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: On her last day, she sees the culmination of her battle.





	On the Way Home (Mythology Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Estirose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Good To Go](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19423894) by [Estirose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose). 

She was there, thinking of her husband and daughter, inside four white walls. As it was, being in hospice care was not the nightmare fuel that cancer had been during active treatment. The nurses were kind, gentle, and willing to listen. They were ready for what would come next for her and in a way she imagined this helped her to be as well. The halls were quiet, and the squeak of nurses’ shoes was a strange comfort, a final staccato on the floor marking her time.

There were people there. Not the patients, soon to be where she was going, or so she was starting to think, but there were others. There was Jim, her brother, in the corner on the right near the door, standing so that she always wondered if a nurse would crash into him. He came and went, always smiling, and sometimes she thought she heard him say he was here to make sure she got home okay. But it wasn’t just Jim who was with her.

In the opposite corner there stood a growing group of beings. Beings was what they should be called. For she could recognize them, and some weren’t human. Fenrir sat at Loki’s feet, and Odin stood beside the pair of them.

Odin smiled too, the smile of a warrior who had given so much of himself to reach his goals. To hone his magic, and hold his tools in his hands. “They say cancer is a battle,” he said. “But I see you can see my blood brother as well as myself,” he continued. “And that means you’ve been battling since long before it was acknowledged. Your battle was seen.”

She was too tired to say anything, but Odin smiled his craggy smile again and said, “There’s time yet.”

It made her think of her daughter, and her husband, who weren’t here yet. They weren’t due back immediately. Stacy was across the country, and Max was finally coaxed into going home for a nap. And she was tired too, almost too tired to think at all. Maybe she could close her eyes if she wasn’t so conscious of what would likely come after that.

She was seeing things. (Sensing things.) (Knowing things.) She was…

She settled on Jim, her brother, gone before her of course, and in a senseless accident falling off of a roof. She’d known none of that could be safe, but it was his livelihood and nobody could or would take it from him. 

Thoughts were starting to come and go in a wispy way and she couldn’t hold onto the anger she used to feel about losing out on life, about cancer, about losing Jim. Anyway, he was right there. 

In the other corner, so were so many others.

She laughed a little and asked Odin, “Do you think someone will ask me if I saw Jesus?”

“In this place? Eh. Not really. A couple of ‘em, but you see what you see.”

She smiled. “I haven’t asked for you since I was so young.”

“But you did ask. And we remembered.”

“Simple as that, huh?”

“Simple as that. Invitations are a serious thing, my dear.”

“I should--my daughter--my husband--”

“Let them rest a moment,” Odin said. “Loki can keep them busy. The important thing right now, my dear, is do you believe me?”

“About what?”

“Your battle.”

“I…”

“It’s all right. Give that a moment too. Try to rest if you can.”

“Will I go right away?” she asked.

“Is that what cancer felt like?”

“No.”

“Then you can let it go for a while, child.”

“They’re keeping my pain in check.”

“That they are.”

“I guess it’s all right.”

“I’ll watch over you. We’ll watch over you.”

“On my way home,” she said.

Jim stayed right there, more and more. She knew, because he was exactly where he’d been since he arrived, and no one had knocked him once. They might have felt him if they did, cold and tingly or something, but it never happened. Still, a few of them smiled knowingly at her and she felt a little strage, averting her eyes from her visitors the first few times they did so. But not in the end. Not when she felt the inevitability of it all with its full force and knew she didn’t have long.

Her husband had called and said he was heading over again and did she want anything. She said she wanted a burger and they laughed--she hadn’t been holding down solid food in a while at all.

Maybe it was a reflex, him asking her. There were so few things she could want now. All of them were intangibles. Something in his tone told her he knew that just as well as she did.

“I love you,” he said, “I’ll be there soon,” and she knew he meant it.

Her daughter called moments later and she just barely managed to pick up the receiver and hold it. Every moment was perilous and thick.

“I just knew I needed to call this morning,” Stacy said, young and awkward. “Is dad there?”

“Not yet, baby. Listen, I love you. I love you so damn much.”

“I love you, too, Mom.”

“I’m so tired.”

“I know. Mom...I’ll try to get there tonight. I’m looking at flights.”

“Baby, you need the money. I think it’s going to be today.” Matter of fact from her, strange for Stacy to hear. She knew that, but the truth fell from her lips anyway.

There was a silence.

Then, at the same time, two “I love yous” that overlapped. Creating a perfect harmony.

Stacy was crying but said, “Okay, Mom. I’ll try to make it and I’ll come to be with Dad.” And that part of course was fine. 

“Oh. Yes.” 

Stacy pulled it together again for long enough to say one last, serious, “I love you,” and then hung up the phone, but not fast enough for her to miss hearing her daughter start to cry again. She would always know that sound. Across time, distance, or dimension.

She would hear her daughter from Valhalla.

The thought startled her. Yet it rang true.

So true she saw Loki, his own ripped lips parting into a smile that said they heard her, even in her thoughts.

By now a nurse had come by who looked exactly where she was looking in the corner, knowing and strong. That told her to say everything she needed to know.

It was just the fact that they knew her thoughts too that startled her, enough for her to sit up just slightly in bed and stare at them.

She would be with them soon.

She knew it was so.

“It’s all right to let go,” she heard Odin say, and Loki’s words came on the heels of what he said, like an echo, a doubling:

“It’s all right to let go.”

She closed her eyes.


End file.
